by Zak Keefer, USA TODAY Sports

by Zak Keefer, USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS - He is a homegrown Hoosier dispatched amid the endless plains of Texas football country, grinding away at a school that's a thousand miles from the basketball kingdom in which he was raised.

Pat Knight is also a fired coach given a second chance. He's grateful for that.

It comes at Lamar University, in Beaumont, Texas, and it comes with something Knight has always sought - the chance to construct a college basketball team from scratch, and do so his way. It comes, too, with the latest opportunity for the son of a coaching legend to outrun the stigma that has, predictably and unfailingly, trailed him since he first picked up a basketball.

"You want to know what's hard?" asks Knight, in his third season at Lamar. "What's hard is trying to play high school basketball in the state of Indiana when Bob Knight is your dad."

Yes, he still hears the taunts, the sneers. Hears them every game he coaches on the road. He's heard them all his life.

Why don't you throw a chair?

Why aren't you as good as your old man?

"I kind of wish they'd get more creative, to be honest," Knight says with a laugh. "It's been 30 years. Let the chair thing go."

Knight, who coached the Cardinals to the NCAA Tournament in his first season before a 3-28 record last year, visit Hinkle Fieldhouse to face Butler for the regular-season opener Saturday. It's no accident Knight is back, albeit briefly, in the state where he grew up, played high school and college ball, and where he started in college coaching.

Indiana is home. Always has been.

"You can take the kid out of the state, but you can't take the state out of the kid," he says proudly.

When Knight draws up Lamar's schedule, he looks for non-conference games in Indiana and the Midwest, aiming to return to his roots, widen his recruiting net and show his players what college basketball is like in the heart of hoops country. He brought his team to Purdue last December to face good friend Matt Painter's squad. (The Cardinals lost 72-39.) He hopes to add a team like Louisville, Ohio State or Kentucky in the years to come.

"It's great for our kids to see that type of atmosphere," Knight said. "There's just no better state to play a college basketball game in than Indiana."

Still, he can't believe its been 12 years. Crazy, he says, he's been out of the Midwest for that long. Crazy it's been more than a decade since he and his family packed up and left all they knew for the dry, desert plains of West Texas.

It took time, sure, but he's long come to grips with his father's controversial firing from IU in 2000. He's got better things to do than hold grudges. He's got a program to build.

"Life is short," Pat Knight says. "You move on."

He wishes his dad were the same way. He harbors hope his old man will appease Indiana and return to a game one of these days, if only to hear the deafening roar from the Assembly Hall crowd one more time.

Pat Knight has been urging his dad to do that for years.

"As his son, and as a former player, I'm not telling him not to go," Pat says. "You saw the reaction he got when he went back to Ohio State (in 2011)? I told him he'd get that reaction times 100 if he went back to Indiana.

"I've tried, man, I've tried. Me and (former IU players) Scott May and Quinn Buckner, we've tried. We're working on it. But the guy just doesn't budge. It's really not a big deal to him. He's always done it his way, and right now, he's pretty content just hunting and fishing."

At this point, Pat Knight can't say if The Return will ever happen.

"He is Indiana basketball," he continues. "We all get fired. It happens. To me, his legacy there outweighs that. And it's not like any of us are getting any younger."

After leaving Bloomington, Knight spent seven-plus years working as an assistant under his father at Texas Tech, then assumed head coaching duties when his father retired in February 2008. He lasted three seasons in Lubbock, never reaching the NCAA Tournament, and was fired after a 13-19 campaign in 2010-11.

He was offered a fresh start at little-known Lamar, a program located on the other side of the state that hadn't enjoyed a 20-win season in two decades. Knight turned their fortunes around quickly. The Cardinals won 23 games his first season - probably best known for an infamous rant from Knight late in the year - and earned their first NCAA Tournament berth in 23 years.

Seven top players from that team were gone last season, and the Cardinals, starting three freshmen, bottomed out. The team won a single conference game and just three all season.

"It was terrible," Knight said at the team's media day last month. "No one is more upset about last year than I am."

But the challenge staring at him in the offseason was one he's always wanted: Build a program up from nothing. So he went to work, bringing in seven new faces, including five junior college transfers.

Nevertheless, outside expectations remain low: The Cardinals are picked to finish last in the Southland Conference for the second straight year. Knight remains optimistic.

"Ever since I took this job, this is really the year we've been waiting for," he says. "This is the year we have our first true recruiting class."

For a larger blueprint for his program, he looked no further than the previously little-known school from his home state that has steadily become, in his words, a brand name in college basketball.

He looked to Butler.

"Growing up, if you weren't good enough to go to Indiana or Purdue, you'd go to Ball State," Knight said. "Butler just wasn't a popular school to go to back then. Now, look at them. The credit goes to the coaches they've had and the guy that probably doesn't get enough credit, their athletic director Barry Collier."

His long-term goal, simply stated yet improbable in its undertaking: "I want Lamar to become the next Butler."

The elder Knight visited a few of his son's early-season practices. College basketball's No. 3 all-time wins leader watched from the bleachers, scribbled down notes and let his son work. Before he left, Knight spoke to the team and passed his thoughts along to Pat, who's as eager as anyone to move on from last season's nightmare.

It will take time. He knows this. For Pat Knight, escaping the shadow has never been easy.

"To me, it's not a curse," he says. "I came to terms with it a long, long time ago. I'm Bob Knight's son, and I'm proud of it."